Anthropic’s Akamai bill could reach around $20 billion

Anthropic has committed to spend at least $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai Technologies’ cloud infrastructure and software, Akamai said on September 24. The money pays for CPU workloads. In return, Akamai is giving Anthropic the right to buy up to about 5% of Akamai’s own stock.

Bloomberg put the deal at $12 billion, and The Wall Street Journal reported the $11.6 billion minimum given in the Akamai release. The agreement allows for a further expansion of up to $9 billion, which would bring the total potential commitment to around $20 billion.

Akamai says the commitment supports Anthropic’s “accelerating CPU workload demands” on Akamai Cloud. CPUs are the general-purpose processors that handle ordinary computing, as opposed to the accelerators that train and serve models. That sets this contract apart from most AI cloud deals, which focus on GPUs, Yahoo Finance reported. Akamai describes its cloud as running from large core sites out to thousands of points of presence, the small sites that sit close to users. Yahoo Finance put the count at more than 4,400 edge locations. The platform also includes Nvidia GPUs.

In August Anthropic agreed to take about 460MW from Nscale in West Virginia for $45 billion. The Akamai deal is $11.6 billion with no capacity attached yet: Akamai has given no megawatt or chip count for it.

The equity side comes as a warrant. Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock, equal to 7.7 million shares of common stock once converted, or up to about 5% of Akamai’s outstanding shares, at an exercise price of $111.33 a share. About 2% vests with the $11.6 billion commitment. The remaining 3% vests only as Anthropic uses the $9 billion expansion: roughly 1% for every additional $3 billion of cloud services bought on mutually agreed terms within the warrant’s seven-year term.

Akamai’s earlier contract with Anthropic was valued at $1.8 billion, Financial Juice reported. The new deal also adds to more than $2.8 billion in multi-year cloud commitments that Akamai has announced across its customer base this year.

Akamai estimates the capital spending tied to the $11.6 billion commitment at about $5.5 billion. Of that, it expects an increase of roughly $1.7 billion in 2026 capex to secure and pre-purchase critical supply chain components, and it sees no impact on its 2026 revenue guidance. So the spending starts this year, and the revenue does not.

Investors liked it anyway. Akamai shares jumped more than 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday. Yahoo Finance reported that Akamai does not expect the deal to be profitable this year and expects the contract to generate between $150 million and $300 million in revenue in the second half of 2027, as services begin to ramp.